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While the effects of low birth weight have long been explored, the literature on the effects
of high birth weight is sparse. However, with increasing obesity rates in the United States, high
birth weight has become a potential concern, and has been associated in the medical literature with
an increased likelihood of becoming an overweight child, adolescent, and subsequently an obese
adult. Overweight and obesity, in turn, are associated with a host of negative effects, including
lower test scores in school and lower labor market prospects when adults. If studies only focus
on low birth weight, they may underestimate the effects of ensuring that mothers receive adequate
support during pregnancy. This study finds that cognitive outcomes are adversely affected not only
by low birth weight (<2500 grams) but also by high birth weight (>4500 grams). Our results
have policy implications in terms of provision of support for pregnant women.

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Additional work hours may lead to weight gain by decreasing exercise, causing substitution from meals prepared at home to fast food and pre-prepared processed food, or reducing sleep. Substitution toward unhealthy convenience foods could also influence the weight of one's spouse and children, while longer work hours for adults may further impact child weight by reducing parental supervision. I examine the effects of adult work hours on the body mass index (BMI) and obesity status of adults as well as the overweight status of children. Longer hours increase one's own BMI and probability of being obese, but have a smaller and statistically insignificant effect on these outcomes for one's spouse. Mothers', but not mother's spouse's, work hours affect children's probability of being overweight. My estimates imply that changes in labor force participation account for only 1.4% of the rise in adult obesity in recent decades, but a more substantial 10.4% of the growth in childhood overweight.

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Something about being poor makes people fat. Though there are many possible explanations for the income-body weight gradient, we investigate a promising but little-studied hypothesis: that changes in body weight can-at least in part-be explained as an optimal response to economic insecurity. We use data on working-age men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to identify the effects of various measures of economic insecurity on weight gain. We find in particular that over the 12-year period between 1988 and 2000, the average man gained about 21 pounds. A one percentage point (0.01) increase in the probability of becoming unemployed causes weight gain over this period to increase by about 0.6 pounds, and each realized 50% drop in annual income results in an increase of about 5 pounds. The mechanism also appears to work in reverse, with health insurance and intrafamily transfers protecting against weight gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]